In the days before my trip to Iceland, I had the chance to play with the DJI Phantom, an affordable, out-of-the-box quadcopter for budding aerial videographers.
As I establish in that test flight post, the footage you yield from the DJI Phantom + GoPro combo may not be pro quality, but it’s perfectly serviceable for BTS material, AND it gives a person the opportunity to cut their teeth on a rig that comes in under a grand (or just slightly over, if you include the camera).
Ever the hacks, we tried to circumvent the GoPro limitation and mount a Sony RX 100 II, for three reasons:
1. The RX 100 II has image stabilizations (many commented on the shakiness of the GoPro footage on our first test flight).
2. It has a nice sensor and shoots RAW images.
3. Built-in Wifi. Our plan was to use the iPad Mini with the Sony app and control the camera shutter from the ground.
Seem pretty reasonable, right?
When you watch the video, know this: It brings us no joy to lose expensive gear, ever. I don’t encourage people to go out and perform needless hacks and unsanctioned upgrades, especially if you’re not insured, like we were. In our case we had a legit interest in yielding some higher end footage with a DJI Phantom we had invested in.
Couple of UPDATE points… any assumption that I was just goofing around at a tourist site just playing with my camera couldn’t be further from the truth. We had chartered the entire site for the shoot, been out on boats there at the site earlier – were working with the management there, paying high fees to be there with permits for very specific objectives. We also sought to potentially recover the unit out of concern for the environment but were discouraged from pursuing that option because of danger to divers due to swift current, big tides and huge floating chunks of dangerous ice.
Source: Chase Jarvis Blog
Too heavy? The maximum total weight, including the Phantom, must not be more than 1000g.
That’s not ocean, but Jokulsarlon a glacier lagoon (been there in July), the water is not salted (less damage to a certain degree), so you could tape some light high floatable power material to the Phantom legs and still recover it and the camera from the plunge…
Maybe if you’re lucky enough both could work after drying.
This video is a Fake……. the splash not respond to the physics of the fall of an object on the ice and bounce into the water and you can see the phantom flay 10 or 20 mts away…look 6:18, see the position of the cameraman getting very difficult to follow the object and video editing….other modern Sascuash video
I could be wrong but I had the same issue yesterday, I had my GoPro up and connected to the GoPro Wifi app.. I lost connection with the iPhone first and then lost connection with the Phantom 1 and controller.. so I shot down the controller and the Phantom came home just like it should..
After investigation I guess it was WiFi interference that was the issue. I won’t be doing that again..
Lost my Phantom 2 with Gopro last week exactly at the same(!) spot. Water has two degrees celsius and its 14 meters deep. No WiFi on and no idea what’s happend.